536365 - Disable Filterset.G Updater extension

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(addons.mozilla.org Graveyard :: Administration, defect, P3)

Description

[Wladimir Palant]

I was considering removing Adblock Plus code that warns users who have Filterset.G Updater extension installed. However, when I looked on AMO I noticed that Filterset.G Updater is still active - and I bet that it is still being downloaded despite all the warnings. This extension is unmaintained and the server it downloads filters from (pierceive.com/filtersetg.com) is gone. Even if the extension stays "for historical reasons", it should be at least sandboxed.

Comment 1

[Wladimir Palant]

Ah, I don't need to guess, the statistics are public - roughly 400 downloads per day and still 250k active daily users. Ouch...

Comment 2

[Fred Wenzel [:wenzel]]

Uhm, it feels to me like we've sandboxed this before? :( Jorge, welcome back from vacation ;)

Comment 3

[Jorge Villalobos [:jorgev] (he/him)]

There's a thread in the amo-editors mailing list about this. The Updater add-on has an update for its latest version that does nothing more than remove itself. I don't know if it has been approved or not.

Publishing this update would help reduce the numbers significantly before sandboxing or disabling the add-on.

Comment 4

[Wladimir Palant]

Heh, my fault: bug 497377
So, apparently this is the fake update being available for download there?

Comment 5

[Wladimir Palant]

Confirmed, version 0.5 simply uninstalls itself and version 0.5.1 currently in queue is the same thing without OS X specific (unnecessary) files. The 250k active daily users are mostly ones who chose not to update.

Comment 6

[Jorge Villalobos [:jorgev] (he/him)]

Pushing to a future milestone to check the stats then.

Comment 7

[Wladimir Palant]

Attachment: Applications used by Filterset.G Updater users

Pulled the application stats from AMO - 60% Firefox 3.0 and 20% Firefox 2, oh my... I guess that's not the update-friendly part of the user base.

Comment 8

[Justin Scott [:fligtar]]

We sent out the uninstaller earlier this year (July maybe?) and I kept the add-on public so that the update would go out to users. It dropped a few hundred thousand ADU, but I don't think it's going to get any lower. Last I looked, there were a decent number of people that actually had the uninstaller version installed.

We mainly did the uninstaller update because of Firefox 3.5 compatibility. So, I'm fine with disabling the add-on again or keeping it up. I don't think ADU is going to get any lower though.

Comment 9

[Wil Clouser [:clouserw]]

What needs to happen here?

Comment 10

[Jorge Villalobos [:jorgev] (he/him)]

We wait. On the 5.6 timeline I will review the stats for the add-on and decide if the add-on should be disabled.

Comment 11

[Jorge Villalobos [:jorgev] (he/him)]

I've disabled it.

For whatever reason there's a recent increase in users (270K+ ADU). The majority seem to be using an old version (3.1.3), with Firefox 3.0.*. Better not make it available anymore.

Comment 12

[Tobias (:Tobbi) Markus]

I can find that the add-on is successfully disabled and cannot be found on AMO anymore. 

However, there's still https://preview.addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1136. Do we disable that, too?

Comment 13

[Jorge Villalobos [:jorgev] (he/him)]

Done.